“WHEN I saw The Wizard of Oz I suddenly noticed most films were made in black and white,” said the eminent film critic Roger Ebert, an allusion to the jolt the movie gave to the senses of its original audiences in 1939.
The Wizard of Oz was among the first films made in Technicolor, an innovation that brought rich, pulsating imagery to the screen and every movie thereafter that glories in the spectacular is in its debt.
According to the US Library of Congress The Wizard of Oz is the most viewed film in cinema history.
It’s estimated that over one billion people have feasted their eyes upon its vivacious parade of colour and spectacle. Now that number can be boosted higher, as The Wizard of Oz (3D IMAX) is to be released in cinemas to mark the film’s 75th anniversary.
These days the movie seems like a familiar family favourite or holiday season staple but its history is troubled and complex. Its Irish-American director Victor Fleming was credited with the feature, though he was the fifth director to steer the production.
Unlike others, Fleming had an insightful grasp of the new mechanics of Technicolor and might have won the Best Director Oscar for Wizard had he not beaten himself to it by making Gone With the Wind (also in Technicolor) in the same year.
The film itself has always kept critics and scholars busy looking for interpretations. Adapted from L. Frank Baum’s novel, many have looked to it for meaning. Baum was of Scots-Irish descent and was an Irish nationalist, and some have thought his Emerald City a symbol of shining Irish purity.
Also, as a late 19th-century American settler, Baum had views on Native Americans that nowadays amount to ethnic cleansing and some see his story as a fable for moral supremacy upon America’s physical and mental landscape.
But the movie’s most notably creative figure was Irish set designer Cedric Gibbons. Gibbons was a visionary of remarkable imagination who pioneered deep perspective in cinema. The son of an architect, he’d studied the Art Deco style and how it discarded ornamentation but retained grandeur.
Gibbons understood that cinematic projection readily depicted the clean lines of Art Deco, making both magnificence and minutiae clearly seen. His special effects aroused viewers’ perceptions on every inch of the screen, almost foreshadowing 3D ahead of its time.
The whole 3D concept in cinema is not always as impressive as is reckoned. The idea that 3D makes it all seem so convincingly “real” misses the point that film always works best by testing our sense of what’s real.
But The Wizard of Oz is an exceptional example because its original multi-layered imagery and movement is beautifully enhanced by modern digital techniques.
Having been firstly made brilliantly vibrant by Technicolor, its images are now made immersive by 3D IMAX. The movie might almost have been waiting for 3D IMAX to come along the road and meet it.
It also has a terrific musical soundtrack, which gave the world Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead, the celebratory number that, for many, best marked the death of Margaret Thatcher.
This has added yet another layer of complexity and controversy. If you’ve never seen The Wizard of Oz, see it now; if you’ve seen it before, see it again. The “Witch” might be dead but the Wizard lives.
The Wizard of Oz (3D IMAX) opens at selected British cinemas on September 12
See More: Film, Imax, Reviews, The Wizard Of Oz, Victor Fleming
